Bordetella

The genus Bordetella comprises Gram-negative beta-proteobacteria including three species which are human pathogens;
Bordetella pertussis, Bordetella parapertussis and Bordetella bronchiseptica. B. pertussis,
and occasionally B. parapertussis, can cause whooping cough in human infants. B. pertussis only infects
humans while B. parapertussis infects both humans and sheep. Phylogenetic analyses have shown that B.
parapertussis strains isolated from humans are distinct from those isolated from sheep, and there is little or
no transmission between the two reservoirs (sheep and human). B. bronchiseptica colonize the respiratory tracts
of a range of mammals, but can also persist in the environment for extended periods. It causes chronic and often
asymptomatic respiratory infections in a wide range of animals, but only occasionally in humans. A related species, B.
avium causes disease (bordetellosis) in commercially grown turkeys, but is also found in a variety of healthy
wild and domesticated birds.

Data downloads

The Sanger Institute has been funded by the Wellcome Trust to sequence the genomes of Bordetella pertussis
strain Tohama I, B. parapertussis strain 12822 and B. bronchiseptica strain RB50 in collaboration
with Duncan Maskell and Andrew Preston of the Centre for Veterinary Science, Dept. of Clinical Veterinary medicine,
The University of Cambridge. The sequences and analysis are described in: Parkhill et al (2003) Comparative analysis
of the genome sequences of Bordetella pertussis, Bordetella parapertussis and Bordetella
bronchiseptica. Nature Genetics 35 32-40 (DOI: 10.1038/Ng1227), and have been submitted to EMBL/GenBank with the
accession numbers: BX470248 (B. pertussis),
BX470249 (B. parapertussis)
and BX470250 (B. bronchiseptica).

We have have also sequenced three closely related isolates of a B. pertussis bacteriophage that exhibited a
novel mechanism of host range variation. The mechanism is described in Liu et al, Science 295, 2091 (2002), and the
bacteriophage sequences were published in Liu et al, J Bacteriol 186, 1503-1517 (2004), and are available from
Genbank/EMBL as: AY029185, AY526908 and
AY526909.

We have also been funded by the USDA to sequence the genome of Bordetella avium strain 197N in collaboration
with Louise Temple of the Department of Biology, James Madison University

Bordetella bronchiseptica complex
sequencing

The Sanger Institute has completed a project to sequence further strains within the Bordetella bronchiseptica
complex to investigate the evolutionary history and host tropism differences within this group of organsims. The
strain selection is based on the MLST tree published in Diavatopoulos et al, PLoS Pathog. 1, e45 (2005).

This work is being done in collaboration with Dr. Craig Cummings and Prof. David Relman (Relman Lab, Dept. of
Microbiology and Immunology, SUMC, Stanford University), Prof. Eric Harvill (Centre for Infectious Disease Dynamics,
Penn State University), Dr. Andrew Preston (Univeristy of Bristol), Dr. Frits Mooi (Laboratory for Infectious
Diseases and Perinatal Screening, National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, Netherlands)
and Dr. Jeff F. Miller (Department of Micribiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, UCLA).

The strains selected for sequencing included :

B. bronchiseptica strain 253 (ST27)

B. pertussis strain 18323 (ST24)

B. parapertussis (ovine) Bpp5 (ST16)

B. bronchiseptica strain MO149 (ST15)

B. bronchiseptica strain D445

B. bronchiseptica Bbr77

B. bronchiseptica strain 1289

This project is funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Published Genome Data

The fully sequenced and annotated reference genomes are available from EMBL/GenBank as follows :-

Comparison of the genome sequence of the poultry pathogen Bordetella avium with those of B. bronchiseptica, B. pertussis, and B. parapertussis reveals extensive diversity in surface structures associated with host interaction.

Related links

Data Use Statement

This sequencing centre plans on publishing the completed and annotated sequences in a
peer-reviewed journal as soon as possible. Permission of the principal investigator should be
obtained before publishing analyses of the sequence/open reading frames/genes on a chromosome or
genome scale. See our data sharing policy.